Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to Innovation Pioneers Summit 2024, hosted by Skanska this past November. It was two days filled with learning, sharing, insights, and hands-on workshops.
A key part of Innovation Pioneers is always to equip our members with practical advice, tools, and methods that can be applied directly within their own organizations. Below, you’ll find the documentation from the four innovation workshops featured at this year’s summit.
Documentation from the Innovation Workshops
Workshop #1:
Intrapreneurial Capital
Hosted by Principles of Intrapreneurial Capital
We plan to demystify intrapreneurship by deep-diving into the 4C Model. It helps organizations navigate and manage transformative projects by guiding them through four key contexts: Chaos, Complexity, Complicated, and Clarified. It offers a structured approach to innovation, starting with exploring new ideas in uncertain environments (Chaos) and moving towards their integration into stable business operations (Clarified). By understanding the distinct dynamics at each stage, the 4C Model aids in reducing conflicts, improving collaboration, and ensuring that leadership adapts to both stable and changing systems. Ultimately, it helps build organizational resilience and adaptability, turning disruption into strategic growth.
Download the presentation from Principles of Intrapreneurial Capital
Workshop #2:
Adjacent areas for a Heavy Duty Truck company – Using Future Facts to immerse into possible futures
Hosted by Volvo Group and Pollen.
Working with the future tends to get vague, because trends are typically volatile and because it’s socially easier to make sweeping, abstract descriptions rather than commit to a clear description of the future. There’s also a tendency to want to work on happy scenarios, which might hinder us to explore relevant, but not ideas futures.In this workshop we address these issues with two concepts: randomization and future facts. Future facts are made up, but probable events that a combination of trends might give rise to, e.g. that a competitor floods the market with a cheap alternative, or that a new safety law is passed in congress.You will get the opportunity to work with future facts that concern Volvo and explore what new business opportunities might arise in the worlds described by these future facts.
Download the presentation from Volvo Group and Pollen
Workshop #3:
Vision for a better life and shaping sustainable places
Hosted by Skanska + Superlab
Summary of the Workshop – “The City of the Future 2100”
Participants were introduced to the OECD Better Life Index, gaining valuable insights into the tool and how it is applied across different countries. Following this, they engaged in group discussions to share their perspectives on what the city of the future represents to them. Each group was tasked with selecting three key themes from the Better Life Index that would define their envisioned city. Below are some highlights and outcomes from the workshop:
Prioritization of Values
Participants had the opportunity to identify and prioritize the factors they deemed most critical for a sustainable and vibrant city, often aligning with the concept of the “15-minute city.” Many emphasized the importance of designing future cities with a focus on human well-being rather than solely economic growth.
Diversity of Perspectives
The selected key themes varied among participants, highlighting the different ways stakeholders value aspects of quality of life. However, a common thread emerged, with a strong focus on putting people first—emphasizing health, environment, and safety. Most participants agreed that this approach paves the way for more inclusive and dynamic urban development.
Learning About the OECD Better Life Index
Using the OECD Better Life Index provided a structured framework for systematically considering how various factors interact to create cities that prioritize human needs. Group discussions revealed a clear understanding and appreciation of the tool, showcasing the participants’ ability to integrate their newfound knowledge into their vision of the city of the future.
This collaborative effort demonstrated the potential for innovative urban design that places human well-being at the forefront of planning and development.
Workshop #4:
Navigating Innovation Paradoxes: Leveraging Polarity Management for Driving Innovation
Hosted by CGI and City of Helsingborg
In today’s fast-paced, ever-changing business landscape, innovation leaders often face complex, recurring challenges that don’t have straightforward solutions. These are not problems to be solved, but polarities to be managed—such as stability versus change, control versus empowerment, or efficiency versus innovation. This interactive workshop will introduce the theory of Polarity Management, a dynamic framework designed to help leaders manage these ongoing tensions in a way that creates sustainable innovation.
Rather than traditional problem-solving, you will engage in hands-on activities to explore how polarities operate in your own organisation, learning how to leverage both sides of an issue to maximize their strengths while avoiding the downsides. Through examples, group exercises, and polarity mapping, you will experience firsthand how to balance competing demands and turn tension into an asset for innovation.
By the end of the session you will have gained practical tools to identify key polarities in your organizations and strategies to manage them, fostering a more resilient, innovative, and adaptive culture. This session is designed for active engagement, learning by doing, and leaving with concrete takeaways that can be immediately applied in your work.